GESAC participates in Eurosonic, the music sector’s main European festival

On 13 January, the renowned Music Festival Eurosonic/Noorderslag opened in Groningen (NL) with the European Border Breaker Awards (EBBA). The event is Europe’s main festival/conference for the music sector and features some 300 performances on 36 stages throughout the city, over 150 panels and some 4 000 music professionals.

In light of the Dutch presidency of the European Union this semester (1 January to 30 June 2016), and Eurosonic’s 30th anniversary, this edition was set to attract big names. In fact, the First Vice-President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, presented the public choice award to the Latvian band Carnival Youth during the EBBA ceremony.

GESAC’s President (and CEO of our Belgian member Sabam), Christophe Depreter, attended Eurosonic where he met European Commission and Dutch Presidency officials, and participated in panels.

Burak Özgen, Senior Legal Adviser at GESAC, was also present and participated in two panels on Thursday.

The first panel was on the Digital Single Market Strategy, featuring Dutch MEP Jeroen Lenaers, Artisjus board member Zoltán Czutor, Christophe Depreter and moderator Robbert Baruch, Public Affairs Manager at Buma/Stemra. The second panel focused on transfer of value where Mr. Özgen was joined by Adriaan Kroonenberg of Roland Berger (NL), Paul Pacifio, CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition and President of the International Artist Organisation, and moderator Robbert Baruch.

This panel was especially important as GESAC’s main priority is to rebalance the transfer of value in the market concerning online intermediaries who unjustly invoke the Safe Harbour non-liability provisions of the e-Commerce Directive for copyright protected content.

 

See the line-up and bios for the “Digital Single Market” panel here.

See the line-up and bios for the “transfer of value” panel here.

Check out Eurosonic’s full panel programme here.

Read more about the Dutch Presidency’s priorities here.